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Yesterday I facilitated a brainstorming session on the topic "Second Life for Businesses - fad or business asset?". The event was part of the LIFT'07 conference, but was organized and hosted at Arvetica. To reflect on "fad" or "business asset" we split the 20 participants into three groups in order to write the storyboard for two scenarios:

Scenario A - Dec, 2008: In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) Sam Palmisano (CEO, IBM) explains to the newspaper why they fell for the Second Life fad and lost 85 mio USD of investment in the process…

and

Scenario B - Dec, 2008: The Financial Times (FT) publishes an article stating that Second Life is business as usual and that 85% of all Fortune Global 500 companies have established a major Second Life presence…

At the end all participants voted if Second Life (or virtual worlds in general) was a fad or a potentially important business asset. Have a look at the slides to find out about the results.

The event was quite fun and the 20 participants seemed to enjoy the thinking. You can download the full set of slides here (12mb because of full-sized workshop photos)

ATTENTION: At Arvetica (the consulting boutique I work for) we will soon organize and host a 2 day workshop on "Second Life Immersion for Executives and Marketing Professionals". This event will help business people "live" and understand Second Life and get a feel for the potential business models. Send us an email if you want to be informed about this workshop.

I've been silent for a while because I explored Second Life....For those who don't know what it is: it's a parallel virtual world that you can dive into in the form of an avatar (see wikipedia definition). Today, for example, I was at the virtual World Economic Forum WEF to listen to EasyJet founder.

Various businesses have established a presence there, such as IBM, Adidas, Reuters, Toyota (see video below for the Scion that was launched in Second Life) etc.

Because it's quite a hot phenomena we are organizing a short free presentation at arvetica on March 1, 2007 to discuss what companies may get out of Second Life. Register if you're in Geneva. We are also hosting a workshop at the LIFT conference on February 7 in the afternoon. However, most important: I will later announce a 2-day immersion workshop at arvetica where business people and marketers can really look into the potential of Second Life. Contact me if you want more info or pre-reserve for the limited seats...